Melania Trump and the Art of Being the First Lady

Melania Trump (in sunglasses) and Akie Abe, the Japanese first lady, at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, Fla.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Being First Lady Is a Job” (Sunday Review, Feb. 19), in which Jennifer Weiner asks “if this is labor, shouldn’t we be paying for it?” and says Melania Trump’s absence “also exposes the problem feminism has always had with housework, in the White House or elsewhere”:

Ugh. Why do some people think the bottom line is always about money? To serve the White House and the country it represents is a rare honor, and Mrs. Trump should take on the unpaid role, trying in some way to enhance the lives of those she lives among.

Didn’t somebody with his own White House pass once say, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” or was that all a dream?

MARCI DOSOVITZ

Philadelphia

To the Editor:

Given the Trump phenomenon, in which everything is for sale, I wonder what we will see next — musty old busts and furniture from the White House on eBay?

CHRISTOPHER WYKOFF

Phoenix

To the Editor:

The first family gets free room and board, cleaning services, chauffeurs, cooks and chefs, an airplane, a helicopter, plus a host of other taxpayer-sponsored perks too numerous to count. Does anyone really think we should pay the first lady to help welcome the American public into the home we pay for?

BETH DOLLINGER

Horseheads, N.Y.

To the Editor:

My guess is that Melania Trump would not want to accept a salary, and not because she isn’t “liberated.” Never underestimate the ultimate freedom of not being paid for (optional) work. You are beholden to no one. You can cancel at a moment’s notice without having people hate you. You are truly appreciated.

LESLIE G. MARSHALL

Orcutt, Calif.

To the Editor:

I fail to see any connection between Melania Trump’s apparent hesitancy to fulfill the role of first lady and a feminist message. What a privilege it is to represent the United States in a most beautiful setting and make it a welcome symbol for guests and our imaginations. If Mrs. Trump has reasons she does not want to sacrifice in service to this country, that’s personal, not feminist.

While is true that presidential wives other than Mrs. Trump were reluctant to live in the White House, their absence did not place the same huge burden on the taxpayers.

By preferring to live in the palatial Trump Tower, Mrs. Trump is not only costing taxpayers millions of unnecessary dollars but also inconveniencing her fellow New Yorkers by, say, causing the elimination of essential bus stops.

This extravagant self-indulgence by a fabulously rich family is nothing like the example your article cites of Bess Truman and her frequent visits to her home in Independence, Mo.

REBA SHIMANSKY

New York

To the Editor:

Eleanor Roosevelt, who the article said was “reported to have initially struggled with the role,” deserves pride of place among reluctant first ladies. “I never wanted to be a president’s wife,” she told her intimate friend Lorena Hickok the day after her husband won his first presidential election, “and I don’t want it now.”

She was in despair about giving up her independent life in New York — teaching in a girls school, helping to run a furniture workshop at Val-Kill and speaking and writing for Democratic causes — in order to take on the ceremonial role she called “being Mrs. R.”

In the end, she found a way to transform the job. And on her death she was eulogized by Harry Truman, who had named her as a delegate to the United Nations, as “First Lady of the World.”

SUSAN QUINN

Brookline, Mass.

The writer is the author of “Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady.”